Our Lady Church, Baroque church in Wernigerode, Germany.
Our Lady Church is a rectangular baroque hall church in Wernigerode, 31.70 m long and 17.20 m wide, built of locally quarried Rogenstein limestone, partly plastered. Its plain interior has a hipped wooden barrel ceiling of boards and a floor of red brick; the pulpit altar, made by court joiner Johann Michael Möser from a 1759 design, has a pulpit basket flanked by four Corinthian columns. The east facade carries a triangular gable with a sandstone cartouche and copper rays inscribed Deo et Evangelio Jesu Christ.
A Romanesque church with two towers, first mentioned in 1230, stood here until the 1751 fire that destroyed the Burgstraßenviertel and the building with it. Rebuilt in Baroque style between 1756 and 1762 to plans by the count's master builder Johann Friedrich Heintzmann, financed by the Danish royal house and Count Christian Ernst zu Stolberg-Wernigerode. The small Baroque tower was replaced in 1891 by a neo-Gothic tower about 60 m high; a planned conversion of the whole church to neo-Gothic failed for lack of funds. Deconsecrated on 3 February 2019, it reopened as Konzerthaus Liebfrauen on 3 March 2022.
The church was deconsecrated on 3 February 2019 and reopened on 3 March 2022 as the Konzerthaus Liebfrauen, run by the Kulturstiftung Wernigerode. The fixed altar and the side loges, where the count's family once followed services, stayed in the building; the pews were replaced by tiered theatre seating facing the organ. The organ itself remains owned and maintained by the parish.
The tower, about 60 metres high, can be climbed as a viewpoint; its clock, made by Ed. Korfhage & Söhne in 1891, is still wound by hand. Sunday services are held weekly, and the building is open daily for visits at set times. The main entrance today is the stepped portal in the tower, whose tympanum shows the Lamb of God.
The tower clock, installed in spring 1891 by Ed. Korfhage & Söhne of Buehr, is largely cast iron and still wound by hand after a 2005 overhaul; its dials measure 2 m across. The tower holds three bells and can be climbed as a viewpoint.
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